For assignment #2, I evaluated a close relative’s Facebook site. She is about my age and gender and because I know her very well, I felt that I would be able to judge her motivations for impression management on Facebook and better assess her digital deception. According to the 2000 Impression Management Model by O’Sullivan, Facebook has a lean valence of communication, acting only as a social site that allows you to interact with your friends through public message boards, educational networks, instant messaging, private emails, exchanged gifts, witty bumper stickers, groups, and personal information. The overwhelming popularity of Facebook supports the second hypothesis of the O’ Sullivan model of impression management that if the locus is self, a mediated channel would be preferred.
I created a check list of her Facebook conventional signals, or the aspects she posted about her identity, with a scale from 1 (completely inaccurate) to 5 (completely accurate). These scores did not include her assessment signals. Some of these verified signals include: networks, friends, university email, conversations on other people’s Facebook sites (exhibiting her grammar), educational information confirmed by networks, pictures others posted of her, and a hyperlink to her university website. She scored an average score of 3.75, and 44% of the time there was some deception (any non-five number was considered deception. She was surprisingly truthful about her actual self, providing accurate descriptions of her sexual orientation, gender, goals for Facebook, birthdate, address, music preferences, movie preferences, favorite books, and fan pages. Two of the three categories that showed the greatest deviation involved her political affiliations and religious beliefs. In both circumstances, she wrote “none” so that people would not judge her personality based on her beliefs. This demonstrates the ambiguity and clarity dialectic in her impression management. The other category that showed deception was her relationship status. This was partly to show a humorous self presentation, but mostly this was used for safety.
Impressions are formed on Facebook through profile information, messages, fan pages, and established networks. As mentioned in the Impression Management Model, self Presentation on Facebook relies on social skills and the ability to manage internet interactions competently (Wiemann, 1977). This technical competence can be demonstrated in Facebook based on the quantity of networks formed and the amount of groups joined. Furthermore, people can manage their self presentation by controlling the information displayed on the profiles as consistent with the hyperpersonal model. The personas that people portray via their profiles reflect people’s ideal selves as well as their actual personalities, as described by Goffman ( 1959) and Jung (1953). In the case of my relative, who is a very shy person in face to face interactions, her profile shows over one hundred friends, over fifteen who give her gifts on a daily basis, and a variety, based on the messages posted on her “wall,” who she communicates with daily. This shocking personality deviation is an example of how she is trying to portray her ideal self on Facebook. Moreover, she admittedly tries to use social associations to guide visitor’s impressions. She associates with extraverts and those with similar interests in order to disguise her shyness and boost her accomplishments. For example, she is an animator, and she joined all of the animation networks and befriended all of her university classmates who mirror her creativity. She expressed an interest in people who have unique profile pictures and colorful and eclectic profile pages in order to draw people to her page. She further followed the Jung model when she chose her activities. She wrote all of the activities she feel that she ought to possess. In one instance, she wrote that she hugs trees for fun, because she feels that she should get involved in recycling, but she has yet to actually participate in any form of conservationism.
Consistent with the Impression Management Model, my relative utilizes a mediated channel to embellish her self presentation. In addition, she was relatively truthful in her Facebook account, which is probably for the reason explained in “Separating Fact from Fiction” (Toma et al). “[…] Warranting or the connection between the self and a given self presentation[…]” increases “the possibility of deception detection and should curb deception online.”
No comments:
Post a Comment